


...have seen your heart, and it is...

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Abuse, Dark Character, Dark!Harry, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Present-tense, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, mild Dumbledore-bashing, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...And so he tries to lose himself in sleep and waking dreams, and when his consciousness drops away, another’s consciousness seeps in.</p><p>And, to its indescribable surprise, it finds itself welcomed with open arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	...have seen your heart, and it is...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YumeNoTsuzuki (Yumejin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yumejin/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [YumeNoTsuzuki (Yumejin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yumejin/pseuds/YumeNoTsuzuki) in the [HarryMort_Prompt_Night](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HarryMort_Prompt_Night) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
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> Something based on the quotes: "Harry speaks in Parseltongue at night" and "I have seen your heart and it is mine."  
> (Both are from the Deathly Hallows)

Love is supposed to protect this little boy’s heart; love is supposed to be the power he has that his mortal foe knows not.

But there is precious little love in this house, and all of it is directed towards his cousin; he himself is beaten and starved and locked in the cupboard under the stairs, there to rot away until his aunt and uncle have need for a house-slave again. If he has any memory of love, it is in half-remembered snippets of his mother’s smiles and his father’s laughter – but even that is drowned out by his father’s desperate yells to take the boy and run and his mother’s screams and pleas for mercy.

And so he tries to lose himself in sleep and waking dreams, and when his consciousness drops away, another’s consciousness seeps in.

And, to its indescribable surprise, it finds itself welcomed with open arms.

* * *

The boy is ten now, and has neither friends nor sympathizers; he sings strange tunes to himself and skips in unnerving patterns around the schoolyard, his eyes watching things they cannot see, and no one cares to get near him. The adults speak in hushed whispers of prenatal drug abuse and hereditary insanity; the children mutter about being force-fed far too much mud and bugs and other things, and Dudley and his gang smashing his head into the asphalt one too many times. Whatever their rationalization for his behavior, they all agree that he is a Queer Sort and Not One With Which Good People Should Associate.

He does not mind, for he obviously is a queer sort. He plays with garden snakes and talks to the janitor who hung himself last year; he is found on top of roofs and behind locked doors, and they can never get a word out of him as to how he did it. Those who go a bit further in trying to force the answer out of him meet bad fates… very bad fates. Some persisted, at first – but after the Polkiss boy ran into traffic, seemingly of his own volition, no one’s ever tried again. The boy hardly notices the existence of people who don’t bother him – Everyone prefers to return the favor.

Oh, his relatives think otherwise. It will take them until Vernon’s second heart attack and Petunia’s third nervous breakdown before the adults learn to leave well enough alone. Dudley, thick as he is, understood when his best friend and most trusted accomplice was reduced to a long smear of gristle and meat beneath an articulated lorry’s treads.

It’s all coincidence, of course. It wouldn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny. They live in the modern world, not some piddling village that hasn’t much changed since the Middle Ages – and they're solid, concrete people living in solid, concrete reality, not the actors on the set of The Omen.

That’s what the residents of Little Whinging tell themselves, but they know better than that.

* * *

The boy is beside himself with happiness when the letter comes; he runs around the house and bounces off the walls all day, screaming to his imaginary friend that he needs to look and see this – is he listening? He’s going to _Hogwarts!_ – and reading the letter aloud over and over again. His relatives, meanwhile, huddle in front of the telly and try to pretend he’s not there.

They don’t object. They don’t try to stop him. They don’t even act as though they’ve taken notice.

The only thought in their minds is how to best accommodate him and make him as happy as possible. That’s what they focused on when he brought the boa constrictor home from the zoo, and it all worked out… splendidly. That’s what they focused on when he told them quite casually at dinner one day that he thought Dudley was a much better fit for the cupboard than he was, and that worked out well enough. That’s what they focused on when he decided that he’d carve off some of the household budget for “clothing, literature, and equipment” expenses, and that had worked out quite nicely. All they need to do is accommodate him in this one last thing, and they’ll be free – for the Hogwarts term, anyway, which seems to them as though it will last forever.

Their only prayer is that he doesn’t burn the house down on his way out. 

* * *

The Weasley boy knows awe as he stares at his new friend, and has to struggle to keep his hands from shaking; he knows – he has been _told_ , rather – that this is wrong, but he cannot repress his excitement and twisted glee. He sees a future that promises that he will no longer be merely the youngest Weasley boy, no longer be laughed at and spat upon by the richer Purebloods, no longer be foredoomed to a life of being second-best and least-loved – and for that, he will do anything, _anything_ for Harry Potter. Absolutely _anything_.

The Malfoy boy knows stark terror as he lies on the floor, choking back tears and blood; next to him, Potter kneels, pressing the tip of the phoenix-feather wand to the blond lad’s neck and crooning taunt after taunt and threat after threat into his ear, his voice filled with hissing laughter.  “It’s you who didn’t know what was good for you, Malfoy,” the child-monster whispers, and its miserable prey can do nothing but agree.

The Granger girl knows revulsion as she retreats from the doorway of the compartment, and forces herself to look away from the two unconscious boys and their whimpering companion on the floor; she has no chance against the other occupants in a fight, and her words of morality and admonishment are met only with scorn and laughter. She finds herself ill-liking this new world she is entering; were it not for the innocent, round-faced boy she has already met and promised to help, she would consider turning back and leaving it entirely.

The Longbottom boy knows none of this, and will hear very little of it from his new friend; nonetheless, he will leave the train feeling a vague unease at the very thought of Harry Potter, and keep his distance from him and his red-haired fellow when it comes time to gather for the Sorting. And this is wise of him indeed, though he does not know it.

And the Potter boy?

The Potter boy knows everything.

* * *

Harry Potter sits down at the Slytherin table and throws a smiling glance at the bruised and scraped Draco Malfoy, who shudders and averts his eyes; soon after him, a confused and miffed Ronald Weasley deposits himself at the Gryffindor table, aiming strange looks the Slytherins’ way all through the dinner. Few care and few take notice, however – They have more interesting concerns than the feelings of first-years. Or so they think.

“What’d you go and do that for?” Weasley asks Potter in the boys’ lavatory the next morning, keeping his voice low so other occupants cannot hear. “I thought we agreed that it was too obvious–”

“There are things to which I need access that can only be reached from the dungeons,” Potter replies in a curt and harried voice. “I couldn’t risk territorialism getting in my way. Slytherin it was.”

Weasley thinks for a moment of asking what these _things_ are, then keeps his mouth shut. If he doesn’t need to know, it’s not his place to ask. And Potter, understanding his thoughts, gives him the smile of a master to a good servant.

“All right?” he says. 

“All right,” Weasley confirms.

* * *

Blaise Zabini cannot sleep.

He tightens his hands around his blanket and stares at the ceiling, his eyes wide and unseeing in the darkness. He cannot get up, he cannot move, he cannot so much as make the slightest sound – but he cannot sleep.

He is the occupant of the bed next to Harry Potter’s.

To those farther away, the sounds coming from Potter’s bed are just the rustling of sheets and soft snoring as Potter sleeps – but Blaise knows better. Each delicately-enunciated hiss glides across his hearing, each abrupt rasp scrapes along his eardrums…

…and each sibilant response from far, far below the dungeons, from deep within the darkest and dankest places within Hogwarts, from places within the school that are not even acknowledged to exist, sinks ice-cold fangs into his spine.

Blaise Zabini cannot sleep.

* * *

Dumbledore is supposed to protect this school; Dumbledore is supposed to be the one thing the Dark Lord fears above all.

It is true, to some degree. Hogwarts knows not the same fear as did Little Whinging; it continues on much as it always has, and its initial fascination with Harry Potter fades quickly. Some, to be sure, might say it did so abnormally quickly.

There are things that must be done, and the boy does not want to be bothered with the inane masses.

He is a quiet and charming sort, and only the overly anxious and anti-social, such as high-strung young Granger and neurotic young Malfoy, might say that he’s strange and perhaps a little dangerous. He is not _overly_ intelligent – nothing that would make others too jealous and make him too many enemies – and not _overly_ skilled with magic – nothing that would provoke fear and unease in others. He is simply a very likeable young man, and does nothing to distinguish himself from the rest of the student horde. Dumbledore observes his submission to authority, his aversion to standing out from any crowd, and his eagerness to please, and smiles knowingly and takes another Lemon Drop from the Headmaster’s personal candy dish. All is well.

There is a ratty, trembling blond man who comes to the boy one night and throws himself at the child’s feet, pressing his lips to the boy’s battered trainers and crying desperately for mercy; there are walks the boy takes at night, from which he does not return for several hours, and about which he refuses to speak; there are conversations he holds with himself in hushed whispers, his face twitching in discomfort and his fingers absent-mindedly scraping at his scar all the while; there are offers he makes to certain select members of the student body (the Weasley twins accepting before he can even finish the introductory sentence); there is nasty mishap after nasty mishap that befalls Neville Longbottom, though the bumbling ‘Squib’ continues to survive it all with nary a serious injury; there is a Quidditch game that ends in the Hufflepuff Seeker being carried off the field in a coma from which he will not wake, his aged broom having come completely apart at the most important part of the game, while the boy sits and watches from the Slytherin section, a quiet smile tugging at his lips; there are many, many misfortunes that fall upon those who scorn or reject Harry Potter, though others are always found to have been to blame…

But, for Dumbledore to know of any of these things, he would have to be keeping a close eye upon Harry Potter, rather than taking his pig to the slaughter’s compliance for granted and letting his fate fall out as it will. 

And, as Aberforth could have bitterly remarked had anyone informed him of the situation – if Albus could leave his own sister thrashing, vomiting, and screaming on the kitchen floor while he locked himself up in his bedroom with Grindelwald for a long session of, ah, _studying_ , what power on earth could make him show some responsibility towards a boy he barely knew?

* * *

_Once, there was a great Dark Lord who was cast down low, and forced to hide away for many of year; he was less than the meanest ghost, weaker than the weakest creature that was alive, and yet – he survived._

_And so it came to pass that a weak man stumbled across his hiding-place, and the Dark Lord made him his servant; and together, the servant and the Dark Lord departed that place and returned to the land from which the Dark Lord had come._

_The Dark Lord could not yet reveal himself, for he still lacked power or form, and a great and terrible sage who had opposed him from the instant of their first meeting still held sway over the land; so the Dark Lord concealed himself within his servant and contemplated his schemes, moving ever closer towards regaining his power and perfection._

_It came to pass that the sage, who was entering his dotage, let an incredible opportunity slip into the Dark Lord’s grasp; the Dark Lord knew the sage meant it as a trap, but, confident in his own competence and cunning, seized at it nevertheless._

_The Dark Lord was not unopposed; the very child who had led to his original downfall rushed to stop him, and, on the very cusp of his seizing the prize, his servant came face-to-face with the boy in the chamber where the great treasure was held._

_But the Dark Lord was not alarmed; after his servant had restrained the child, he commanded him to turn around and unwind the bandages from around his head, revealing to the helpless whelp his enemy’s true visage –_

_And the boy let out a laugh of shock and delight. “Why, it’s_ you _!” he cried. “Whatever took you so long?”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> If it isn’t clear, Harry was only in contact with the scar-Horcrux. He didn’t know Quirrel was Voldemort’s host, and Voldemort didn’t know what Harry had become.
> 
> I’m not going to continue this AU (sorry!), not least because I have no concrete idea of Harry’s powers and their limitations, but I can confirm that Neville and Hermione would be the ‘heroes’ in this AU. (Whether they’d stand a chance is another matter entirely…)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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